The Aberration of Eden Pruitt, page 21
Ruth kept shaking her head. “Someone will recognize us. They’re going to make the connection. They’ll know why we disappeared. They’ll know who Eden is—”
“Ruth,” Dr. Norton said—calmly, reassuringly. As though trying to mitigate the hysteria in her voice.
“Our faces are on Concordia National News! And we disappeared. We just … disappeared. And now here we are, with different names and an 18-year-old daughter who is being touted as armed and highly dangerous. With ties to Interitus.”
Barrett’s face had gone off-white.
Alexander seemed to have lost his words altogether.
Maybe they were hiding with Jane’s.
Tears welled in Ruth’s eyes. Frightened, helpless tears as she sank onto the armrest of the sofa. “If they find her …”
The unfinished statement hung in the air.
If they found her, they would finish the job the former CIA agent couldn’t.
They would destroy Karik Volkova’s weapon.
32
Eden stood between Cassian and Cleo, ready to come out of her skin. They were inside Mona’s office—room, whatever it was with the bed and the desk and the bins—in immediate need of getting out of Chicago. But there was no safe way of leaving. Eden ached to speak with her parents, but she couldn’t take even the tiniest risk of jeopardizing their location.
“I’m sure by now there’s an APB on my car,” Cleo said. “And even if there isn’t, we won’t make it past the checkpoints.”
Which meant last night’s naïve and simple plans were a bust.
“Train and bus stations will be crawling with cops,” Cass said.
“Airports are obviously out of the question,” Cleo added.
“Doesn’t your mom have a private jet?” Eden quipped.
“Yeah, but how are we supposed to use it? I guarantee the government is monitoring her phone calls, her internet activity. We have no way of getting in touch with her.”
Which left … what? Walking was out of the question. Even if they could traipse halfway across the country, they were bound to be detected at some point. Eden bit her bottom lip. How in the world were they going to escape Chicago and make it all the way to the east coast undetected with the entire country on high-alert and drone surveillance and facial recognition and retinal scans everywhere?
“There’s the train yard,” Mona said flatly.
The train yard.
Cleo’s posture straightened. “Train hopping. Finn did it this past summer. He traveled with a group of hobos for two weeks, all the way from Lincoln to Boise.”
“Why?” Cass said.
“He plans to write an article about it. The lost art of anonymous travel. According to him, train hopping is the way to go. If you’re patient and careful enough, you can get almost anywhere in the U.S. without a single retinal scan. Without paying anything either.”
“Chicago to Baltimore is a common route,” Mona said. “And there are several train hoppers living here who would be willing to help you along with a little incentive. Zeb is the most experienced.”
“Can we trust him?” Eden asked.
“Trust him to what,” Mona replied, “lead you in the right direction?”
“There’s a bounty on our heads.”
“Zeb hasn’t watched Concordia News since it debuted twenty years ago. Nor is he the type to trust hotlines. Or phones.” Mona arched her thin eyebrows, waiting for them to make their decision.
Cleo broke the silence first. “What are we going to do with our vehicles? We can’t leave them outside the fence. Eventually, they’re going to draw attention.”
“I can take them off your hands,” Mona said. “If you’re train hopping, you’ll need the right supplies. And that will cost you money.” She shuffled to her desk, unlocked the bottom drawer, and pulled out a small safe. She removed a stack of well-worn twenties, licked her middle finger, and counted out a hundred of them.
Two thousand dollars.
Cassian’s bike alone was probably worth more than that. Never mind Cleo’s Tesla. Mona was going to make out like a bandit. But like Cleo said, what other choice did they have?
He took the stack of bills.
“I’ll go find Zeb.” With a nod, Mona exited the room.
When she was gone, Eden turned to Cassian. “This doesn’t feel right.”
Judging by the look on his face, he agreed with her instincts.
“Of course it doesn’t feel right,” Cleo said. “Nothing about this is right. But it’s the only way we’re going to get out of here.”
Eden squeezed her eyes shut and pinched the bridge of her nose. “This safe house in Bethesda—Elmer and Eloise Miller. You think they’re trustworthy?”
“They wouldn’t be listed as a safe house if they weren’t.”
“But we aren’t just people living off the grid, Cleo. According to Concordia, we’re fugitives who blew up Chicago.”
“Safe houses don’t subscribe to Concordia.”
But that didn’t mean they weren’t tempted by money.
Eden’s mind spun, her nerves a tangle.
Nowhere felt safe, and this underground world kept getting crazier and crazier. Fighters and gamblers and illegal newspapers and off-the-grid communities and safe houses and this illicit metaverse called the Amber Highway. Was this really happening? She and Cass and Cleo were going to hop on a train and make their way east, then stay in some random couple’s home, trusting that they wouldn’t at least be tempted to call the hotline?
“We should probably disguise ourselves,” Cleo continued. “I wonder if Enez is still here. She’s fabulous with braids. We should also try to get the authorities off our scent. Get them thinking we’re headed west instead of east.”
“How do you propose we do that?” Cassian asked.
“A phony call to the hotline?”
He shook his head. “They’ll be tracing every call that comes in.”
“So we need someone to call for us. Someone who won’t rouse suspicion or get into trouble if the call is traced.”
Cassian blinked at her. “Do you have someone in mind?”
Cleo didn’t.
But Eden did. “My friend Erik. He lives in San Diego.”
Cleo smiled. “That’s definitely west.”
Cassian made quick work of finding his number, then handed Eden his phone. “Keep it brief in case they look into his phone records. The shorter the call, the less likely they can trace it. We’ll ditch this phone before we leave.”
Eden took a shaky breath.
She hadn’t spoken with Erik since the day before her house was ransacked in Eagle Bend. Her best friend since the sixth grade. And now, suddenly—after dropping off the face of the planet, with her face on Concordia National News—she was going to call him, and she couldn’t stay on the line long enough to explain any of it.
He didn’t answer the first call.
He didn’t answer the second.
When Eden dialed the third time, he picked up halfway through the first ring, his greeting soaked in wariness.
“Erik?” she said.
Silence followed.
A long, pregnant pause.
Cleo tapped her wrist like she was wearing a watch.
“Erik?” Eden said again. “Are you there?”
“Eden?” he finally replied, his voice even higher than usual. There was another brief silence, and then, like a popped cork, the questions spewed. “What’s going on? Where have you been? Why haven’t you called? And why are reporters saying you had something to do with the bombings in Chicago?”
Eden closed her eyes, missing him terribly. She ached to answer him. To go somewhere private and tell him everything. The whole crazy story. But she couldn’t without putting too many people in jeopardy. “Listen, Erik, I need you to call the hotline.”
“What?”
“The hotline. I need you to call it. Tell them I contacted you. Tell them I’m coming to San Diego.”
“Eden—”
“Please.” With that, she ended the call.
With heartbreaking gentleness, Cassian took his phone.
“Think he’ll do it?” Cleo asked.
“I know he will,” Eden said.
The makeshift door swung open.
Mona returned, followed by a sallow-skinned man with a scraggly beard and stooped shoulders. He reeked of alcohol. He smiled at them, revealing a missing front tooth. And when he shook their hands, his was trembling slightly.
“So,” Zeb said, his voice like gravel. “I hear you’re wanting to get to Baltimore.”
33
They spent the rest of the morning holed away in Mona’s room, listening to Zeb share his wandering expertise on the craft of train hopping. For this was what it was to Zeb—an artistic skill. One that could be honed with practice and study. One that lit his jaundiced eyes the longer he talked. He drew them a map with his trembling scrawl. He wrote them a list of items they would need for the journey. He told them what to expect and how to know which trains to catch—which rides were safe, which rides would be challenging, and which rides were impossible. He told them about the many dangers, including a collection of gruesome stories about train-hoppers who had lost life and limb. He told them how to evade the yard bulls, a name he used for railroad cops, and when Eden asked how long the trip would take and he responded, “not more than a week”, she tried not to choke on her rubbery eggs.
All the while, the malnourished boy rounded up the items on Zeb’s list—a difficult task, as most retail stores required retinal scans. They sent him off with a substantial chunk of their cash, another exercise in trust, for how could they know he wouldn’t take the money and run, or see their faces on the front of Concordia Times and turn them in?
Cassian destroyed his phone and tossed it into the canal.
Cleo found the woman named Enez to do her hair, a process that took several laborious hours. By the time she was done, Cleo’s regular style of Bantu knots had morphed into a headful of tiny braids that hung long down her back. Eden’s hair went in the opposite direction. Enez tied it into a low ponytail and cut off twelve inches, resulting in a choppy, shoulder-length style much shorter than she was used to. And much easier to tuck beneath her new army green beanie. Cleo had found it in one of Mona’s bins. She’d also found a baseball hat for Cassian and a pair of Buddy Holly glasses for herself. Between the new hairstyle and the glasses and the removal of her snake bite lip piercing, Cleo’s appearance was so different, Eden wasn’t sure she’d recognize her if they were to pass one another on the street.
The boy didn’t return until early evening, heavy laden with three bulging backpacks attached to three rolled up sleeping bags. They waited until nightfall before sneaking off to the train yard, the swirling gray clouds overhead an ominous sign. They hunkered in the hiding spot Zeb had shown them for five whole hours, two of which involved rainfall, before a train with ridable cars rolled to a stop. They hopped into a well and ducked low, Eden’s heart crashing as a flashlight cut through the drizzling night. Another uncomfortable hour passed before the train started moving and when it did, the sound was deafening—a thunderous, ear-splitting racket as the behemoth machine picked up speed and the city lights sped past in a blur.
They were going, going, gone.
Out of Chicago.
No longer in the center of the bullseye.
The rain clouds cleared. An expanse of star-strewn sky stretched overhead. Their clothes dried out. And as cornfields whipped past at seventy miles per hour, Eden understood the fond look on Zeb’s face. Because, for one bright and breathtaking moment, she felt like she was riding on the back of a steel dragon.
Time became a blur, like the passing scenery.
Zeb had warned them that train travel was an unpredictable, often-frustrating mode of transportation. But he had done so like an indulgent grandfather, watching his grandson’s naughty behavior with an amused twinkle in his eye. Train travel was more than frustrating. It was maddening, with stops occurring for no rhyme or reason. One minute, they were zipping along in a rush of inescapable noise. The next, they were hiding from the bulls as floodlights rolled over their backs. Then there was the unpredictable nature of how long the train would remain stationary. Should they hop off and try to catch another or should they stick it out and wait? There was no way of knowing. Never mind the constant, nagging concern that they could be headed in the wrong direction.
Somewhere halfway through Ohio, they made their second transfer.
They crept along the periphery of a new train yard—sleep-deprived but glad to be on solid ground. After three days of this taxing mode of travel, without phones or Concordia News or any other human beings other than the occasional conductor or yard bull sweeping the grounds with a flashlight, Eden felt cut-off from the world. Like there was no witch hunt. Like there was no Monarch. It was just her and Cleo and Cassian and this massive system of steel and freight.
They hid behind a cluster of bushes while Cassian snuck closer to get a better sense of their surroundings. Eden sat cross-legged on the ground and wrapped herself in her sleeping bag, wishing her superhuman powers would keep away the night’s chill.
Cleo did the same, her teeth chattering as she stared from Cassian’s shrinking backside to Eden. Back and forth, back and forth, like the pendulum of a grandfather clock.
“What?” Eden said after the third swing.
“Nothing. It’s just … intense.”
“What is?”
“The way he looks at you. The way you look at him.”
A flush crept up Eden’s cheeks. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, come on,” Cleo said. “If sexual tension could be measured, yours would be off the charts.”
Eden flushed hotter.
“I understand now why Cass was so reluctant to let me be the tag-along. I am the pernicious third wheel, completely ruining what could have otherwise been a romantic trip of a lifetime.”
“Right. Because running for our lives is so romantic.”
“Emotions are heightened by life-or-death situations. Not diminished.”
With a roll of her eyes, Eden pulled a protein bar from her pack and tore it open.
“You two were alone together for an entire week. In Lou’s basement.”
Eden took a bite and chewed.
Cleo gave her a wide-eyed, exasperated look. “So, has there been …?”
“Has there been what?” Eden said around the mouthful.
“Hanky panky.”
“Hanky panky? What are you—eighty?”
“Well, has there?”
“No!” Eden’s ears had gone mortifyingly hot.
Cleo smiled impishly. “Do you want there to be?”
Eden slugged her in the arm.
“Ouch!” She clutched her shoulder. “Superhuman strength, remember?”
“Sorry,” Eden muttered.
Cleo rubbed the spot. “In all seriousness, I’ve never seen Cass like this. Ever.”
Eden tried to imagine what she meant. “Serious and brooding?”
“Attentive and protective. Which is kind of ironic if you think about it. If he’s going to worry about anyone falling off a railcar, it should be me. Or him. The people who would meet an untimely death. You would just dust yourself off and jump back on.”
Eden ate the rest of her bar as a bullfrog chirped behind them.
“It’s probably comforting,” Cleo said.
“What is?”
“Your indestructibility. Given what happened to his mom.”
Eden considered the offhanded remark, even after Cassian returned.
He didn’t want to stay. There were too many bulls afoot. So they crept onward, through the trainyard, and huddled out of site in an outcropping of trees. For seven agonizing hours. Until finally, another train rumbled toward them—a parade of graffiti-plastered boxcars.
Zeb would call this an easy ride.
Cleo went first, using a rusty foothold to climb aboard. Eden and Cass followed right behind when two things happened simultaneously.
The rusted perch snapped and a piercing pain sliced through Eden’s temple.
Her stomach dropped.
Before she could fall, Cassian’s arm was around her. He pulled her up into the boxcar, their bodies pressed together, their hearts beating in unison.
He was there. Always.
Attentive and protective.
Just like Cleo said.
“It happened again,” he said, his golden eyes boring into hers like the pain was Mordecai and they were back on the rooftop of The Sapphire.
She rubbed her temple and released a shaky breath.
Eden understood his concern. She felt it herself. These flashes of pain were disconcerting, coming and going with the same rhyme and reason as the trains.
“All good?” Cleo asked, rolling out her sleeping bag in the empty car, no doubt eager to catch up on some much-needed sleep without fear of falling off or losing their packs.
Hesitantly—and without breaking eye contact—Cass let Eden go.
The train picked up speed.
Eden rolled out her sleeping bag, too, and with the train rumbling east, she fell fast and hard. When she awoke, Cleo was next to her, buried inside her sleeping bag, snoring softy. Across the boxcar, Cassian was awake, watching her through the dark.
She joined him.
“What time is it?” she asked with a yawn.
“Closer to morning than midnight. I think we’re somewhere in Pennsylvania.”
“Haven’t you slept?”
“A little.”
The train released a long blast of noise—a warning call that carried through the night as the boxcar rocked and rumbled.
Eden took a deep breath and gave voice to her accumulating worry. “What if this is a wild goose chase?”
Cassian looked at her.
“What if Amir Kashif doesn’t know anything? What if someone calls the hotline with information that leads to my parents and Dr. Norton?”
“Your dad was in the CIA.”
“I know. And now his face is on national news.”
